i have this theory...

that any direction or place you want to go in Italy is uphill. Okay, maybe 95% uphill with a really steep grade and 5% downhill with a very steep grade so that your head almost gets ahead of your feet so that you almost fall over. That being said I'm going to have such awesome leg muscles upon my return.

I'm not going to say much about today. Only because, the places I was able to go today - everyone should see someday. The pictures cannot do it justice at all.
We went to San Gimignano and Siena -- two medieval towns built in the Tuscan hills of the Chianti region. San Gimignano was by far my favorite of the two. It was small and quaint and easy to find your way around. The church there was highly decorated - but not in gold and jewels - rather, frescoes on the wall. From hundreds of years ago. We sang "Christ We Do All Adore Thee" while we were sitting down in there and you could just feel it in the room.

We followed on to Siena which was a similar town but much larger. Funny, the colors "burnt siena" and "siena brown" come from the colors of the bricks that make up many of the buildings in town. Neat where those kind of things come from...Siena also has the oldest still active bank in the world. It is called "Monte Del Paschi Di Siena Banca Dal 1472". That's very old.

Anyhow...I'm just going to now post some pictures from the day.
At the small castle in SG. Me, Libby, Amy and Leigh.


A couple of landscape photos; you can see the Chianti vineyards in the second one (These are from SG)




This is the town hall in Siena. It's huge.


And, as we were leaving in the "square" I say that because it's not a square...outside of the town hall they were having a Carnevale (a classier version of Mardi Gras) costume party for the kids. This little girl reminded me of my sweet friend McKinley Kauffman because she's dressed as Cinderella!


Oh - I was going to go to Venice/Switzerland in a couple of weeks for a few days with some of my friends...BUT! we found what they call 'penny' flights on the internet (the flight costs 1 cent and you just pay taxes...) to Stockholm Sweden from Venice for 40 Euro roundtrip. So...we're going to Stockholm for almost 2 days and Venice for 1 from Feb. 11-14th.
How crazy is that?! We have tickets and hostel reservations...this travel thing is pretty awesome.

Until next time, Ciao!

PS: Dr. Shock is here and he is super fun.
PPS: B-Weave and Mrs. Brenda, thank you for your presents. It was a taste of home! You ladies are too sweet. And it was fun talking to you on Skype today :]